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Friday, January 11, 2013

Will Tseng wins 2008 Electronic Knights, 2010 Palciauskas

I most recently saw Will working the floor as a volunteer TD during the Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago's event at Rickover Naval Academy. I knew he was a strong player, but I had no idea how strong! Will recently won the USCF's 2008 Electronic Knights championship, and Alex Dunne wrote a nice feature on him in January's Chess Life. Check it out! (I hope to get permission to republish the article next month for non-subscribers.)In modern correspondence play, email has replaced post cards. In USCF events, the players are not allowed to consult chess engines (Fritz, Houdini, Rybka...), although they are allowed to perform research in chess books and computer databases. (In international correspondence play, engines are allowed.) Jerry Neugarten asked about the date: why 2008?. Well, the event has a preliminary, semi-finals, and finals, and each game takes quite a while to complete. Correspondence play is a great deal of fun, and you rapidly discover how little you and your opponent really understand about this game.Will also recently tied for first in the 2010 Victor Palciauskas championship (in honor of the retired Lithuanian-American correspondence World Champion, who earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois). Will played a beautiful attacking game again James Vaughn that is also featured by Alex Dunne this month at Chess Life Online. (The gentleman in the suit looking vaguely like Col. Sanders is Alex Dunne: I remember playing in a tournament with him circa 1975 when he looked more like one of Hell's Angels.)Congratulations to Will for earning two big championship titles!